While you may know Steel City Shredding primarily for our secure document destruction services, we also provide expert document scanning services.
If your Pittsburgh-area business is undergoing a digital transformation, the last thing your leadership and team members want is to be bogged down with the archiving process.
Not only will Steel City Shredding scan your documents but we also take on all the organization and prep work associated with scanning. This relieves your team from mundane, time-consuming tasks like removing staples and binding, as well as arranging documents properly to get clear scans.
Our document scanning service pays dividends across your company, from regulatory compliance and data security to optimized workflows and lower storage costs.
The Document Scanning Process
Steel City Shredding offers document scanning services for both individuals and companies in the Pittsburgh, Ohio, and West Virginia regions. Here’s how it works:
Document Collection: We’ll pick up your documents at your home, office, or building and securely transport all files back to the Steel City Shredding headquarters on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh.
Prep & Arrangement: Our scanning specialists will organize, index, and prepare the documents, then scan them. The resulting digital scans are searchable, editable PDFs produced via Optical Character Recognition (OCR). We can also index the files according to your preferences.
Final Deliverables: We’ll deliver encrypted hard drive(s) containing the scanned documents to your home or business. With this drive, you can integrate the document scans into your project management system, content management system, or digital archives.
Through Perfect Page technology and Dual Light Illumination, our scanner can turn even poor-quality originals into crisp images. Automatic image enhancement features include streak removal, background smoothing, and image edge fill.
Along with a seamless, hassle-free process, you can expect transparent quotes, affordable rates, and added savings compared to large retail chains or other Pittsburgh-based document scanning services.
Large-Format Document Scanning
Steel City Shredding can complete large-format scanning for documents that are too large for a standard scanner.
These types of documents are often 24×36 inches or larger, making them awkward to store. Some examples include blueprints, site surveys, artwork, historical archives, photographs, banners, and more.
Large-format scanning preserves crucial context like annotations, measurements, and specs. This is especially important because large-format scans are often the only existing copy so having a digital backup is vital.
Document Scanning Improves Access & Efficiency
Document searchability, retrievability, and accessibility are the trifecta of records management.
- Searchability: Can specific files be located using keywords, filters, or metadata inside your digital archive?
- Retrievability: How easily can the average team member find a document within your digital archive?
- Accessibility: Is there uniform visibility for documents that multiple teams need to access? And for sensitive data and records, are the right access controls in place?
Digital scanning services from Steel City Shredding help your team achieve better searchability, retrievability, and accessibility. By converting paper files to scans through OCR, they become searchable PDFs that can integrate into your content management system.
Digital document scans are more easily retrievable than paper documents because they exist within a digital archive where a user can enter a search term or two and immediately have the relevant document(s) at their disposal.
Scanning also offer universal accessibility, where any authorized team member, at any time and in any place, can get the documents required to complete their job. Physical storage doesn’t offer a commensurate level of remote access and requires manual searches that consume precious time.
If you’ve ever been under a deadline and faced the prospect of going on a wild goose chase for paper files, you know how demoralizing it can be.
You try searching yourself. Dead end.
You contact colleagues to see if they have the document you’re looking for (or know where it’s stored). You spend more time waiting on a response. Another dry hole.
You’re forced to move onto another part of the project with the growing anxiety that you may not get the document or file you need. Minutes and hours that could have been spent on the actual task are instead devoted to chasing paper.
Garter Inc. found that 47% of digital workers struggle to find information or data needed to effectively perform their jobs.
That’s where document scans prepared by Steel City Shredding shine brightest. All the physical paper documents, records, and files that were once in folders now rest inside your company’s digital ecosystem. This shrinks the time needed to find a document without team members having to physically sort through filing cabinets or go offsite to a storage facility.
Professional document scanning combines the speed, accuracy, and convenience of records management that company executives and operational teams both covet.
Document Scanning Enhances Data Security
Just as our secure paper shredding services are an extension of your data security efforts, so also is document scanning. Scanned documents from Steel City Shredding are delivered to you via encrypted hard drive, and from there, your team can better store, manage, and protect the sensitive data contained in those scans.
Access controls allow companies to designate which documents fall under universal access and which are restricted. With paper documents, security is limited to physical measures like locked cabinets, secure storage rooms, and sign-out sheets. Digital document scans give your team the ability to set up specific permissions so that only approved team members can view or edit documents.
In that same vein, digital document scans provide a proven, trackable audit trail. A digital archive has features that can show who opened a document, when they accessed it, and what, if any, changes were made. This level of oversight reinforces your chain-of-custody and makes it easier to demonstrate to regulators that you’re maintaining compliance.
For heavily-regulated industries like finance, healthcare, defense, etc. access control and audit trails are essential. Over 64% of regulated industries rely on outsourced scanning to meet compliance mandates involving retention periods exceeding 7 years. Steel City Shredding assists Pittsburgh companies with secure scanning services that help them keep compliant.
For example, financial services companies must comply with data protection laws like Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA). Digital scans of sensitive financial documents give these companies the ability to better control the millions of data points they handle each day.
Hospitals and healthcare providers are legally bound to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and maintain strict confidentiality of protected health information (PHI). Digital scans of healthcare information give doctors, nurses, researchers, and insurance partners a safe digital corridor to access, log, and route PHI to the right places.
Defense primes, contractors, and manufacturers are responsible for system security plans under NIST SP 800-171, independent third-party assessments of security protocols as part of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), and technical data sharing restrictions. Digital scanning services assist defense contractors with data sovereignty compliance so that they can properly handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).
Remember, because Steel City Shredding is NAID AAA certified, which verifies our compliance with all known data protection laws, we’re credentialed to handle sensitive documents. Our shredding and scanning specialists are highly trained and vetted, with many years of experience with sensitive document scanning and shredding. Whether you need secure records disposal, document scanning services, or a combination of the two, Steel City Shredding is the preferred solution among Pittsburgh companies.
Preserve Institutional Memory with Document Scanning Services
Institutional memory is the collection of shared facts, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), lessons learned, unwritten rules, and organizational culture that’s passed down in a company. It’s earned through personal experiences and shared through informal team member chats, mentorships, onboardings, and internal evaluations.
Many businesses make a concerted effort to collect, compile, and distribute this institutional knowledge. However, paper documents make searchability and retrievability a burdensome pursuit. Opting for document scanning services from Steel City Shredding allows your legacy paper records to be more accessible with modern digital tools.
This ensures that institutional memory is preserved and enriched, so that mistakes aren’t repeated and best practices are maintained as your company evolves. Backfiles often have useful information that team members may or may not be aware of, so document scanning from Steel City Shredding can unlock the “dormant” value they possess and bring it back to the surface where teams can make use of it.
Document scanning also goes a long way to eliminating silos among departments in your company, ensuring that authorized team members have equal access.
As often happens inside small companies, institutional knowledge is maintained by a small group of team members and “plankowners” who have been with the company so long, they possess important know-how. If they possess paper records, notes, briefings, and other records that can aid a more robust institutional memory, it’s vital to preserve that hard-won knowledge through document scanning. That way, when they retire or move on, the institutional memory does not leave with them.
Document Scanning Supports Integrated Workflows
Smarter workflows start with digital document scanning. Steel City Shredding can help you convert records into scans that support analytics, forecasting, invoicing, and automation.
Project management tools are more customizable than ever and most come with AI agents that can help perform administrative tasks. Having digital scans of paper records allows AI agents to pull and find documents for you or even recommend certain files when you’re working on a related project.
Here’s just a few ways digital document scans can enable AI-forward workflows:
- Version Control: Team members can mark up, revise, and save multiple versions of document scans. A content management system will track version histories and preserve the authoritative copy.
- Automated Routing & Approvals: Digitized documents can travel along a pre-defined approval process so that all parties involved can see what stage of approval a document is currently at.
- Error Reduction: Since information doesn’t have to be manually reentered, the number of misfiled documents and input mistakes go down.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): a CRM can scrape purchase history, customer contact info, support tickets, etc. from scanned documents and store that information. Sales, marketing, customer service, and operations can quickly and efficiently access this data to nurture leads, personalize marketing campaigns, resolve customer support tickets, and fulfill orders.
- Human Resources: HR teams can provide a better onboarding experience to new team members, set alerts for documents that need reminders for compliance deadlines, and maintain accurate employee records.
Document Scanning Reduces Operational & Storage Costs
Storage costs aren’t getting cheaper by the day.
Paper documents cost businesses up to 31 times more than the price of paper itself due to storage, handling, and waste. Your business can save up to $2,000 per year per filing cabinet.
Digital document scanning services from Steel City Shredding help your company cut down on offsite storage needs and office space that’s eaten up by physical paper files. Digital scans also ensure that documents get more usage.
Archived records at a storage facility require more administrative work and manual searches to source the documents. Naturally, they aren’t going to be accessed as much when a special trip is required each time documents are sought out.
Additionally, digitized documents provide parallel access and instant retrieval, saving companies time and printing expenses. Plus, physical records are susceptible to natural disasters, fires, and degradation over time. Taken all together, digital scanning offers Pittsburgh companies the peace of mind that they can have continuity of business and preserve years of operational knowledge and record-keeping.
Sustainability & Document Scanning
Digital scanning reduces your carbon footprint. After scanning your paper records, we will securely shred them. Steel City Shredding recycles 100% of shredded paper and all eligible e-waste, ensuring that the paper doesn’t go to waste. Digital scans also remove the need for more paper and printing.
Our combination of paper shredding and document scanning services means that you have end-to-end security for your company’s sensitive data. From a one-time purge to a scheduled shredding service, we offer Pittsburgh’s most secure document shredding solutions.
Schedule Consultation Section
To start your digital transformation or archive legacy records, request a quote by calling 412-496-1240 or schedule a video call to learn more about our document scanning services.